Willie Nelson Assures He’s ‘Still Not Dead’

In a live-to-tape interview at SiriusXM’s Music City Theatre in Nashville on Tuesday (April 4), Willie Nelson shared a song from his new album, God’s Problem Child, that pokes fun at a recirculating internet hoax that he’s deceased.

"Still Not Dead" is a playful jab back at what rumor buster Snopes refers to as the “Willie Nelson Death Hoax.” In jest, Nelson kicks off the song with these lyrics: “I woke up still not dead again today / The internet said I had passed away / If I died, I wasn’t dead to stay / I woke up still not dead again today.”

The most well-known paragraph in the most popular recirculating death hoax is about a groundskeeper finding Nelson on the front lawn and calling 911, to which Nelson directly responds in the song: “I woke up still not dead again today / The gardener did not find me that way / You can’t believe a word that people say / I woke up still not dead again today.”

Nelson said the jokes about his passing actually started long ago, but rose to new heights with the dawn of the internet.

“A long time ago, whenever I had ‘On the Road Again,” when it had first come out, somebody came out with the joke, well you know Willie was out singing on the road again and got hit by a truck,” Nelson shared Tuesday. “That was what, 30 years ago, so every now and then somebody comes up with another Willie’s dead story.”

He then paused before adding: “I always loved them, ’cause everybody was so glad to see me.”

Nelson cowrote the song— and six others on the album — with longtime friend and God’s Problem Child producer Buddy Cannon.

Cannon, who was also at the SiriusXM interview, noted that he and Nelson write most of their songs via text and began writing "Still Not Dead" after contemplating all of the different hoax stories.

The full radio segment of Nelson and Cannon will air on Willie’s Roadhouse, channel 59, on SiriusXM near the end of April. God’s Problem Child will be released on April 28.